


Cold Feet

by S_Whisterfield



Category: Mob City
Genre: Celia Rothman au, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-04-27 05:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5036197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/S_Whisterfield/pseuds/S_Whisterfield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>November, 1949.  Joe has been dead for the past two years, and Ned and Jasmine have been living in Boston. They've just gotten married, and they're still not sure whether or not it was a good idea.</p><p>Thanks to theladiesyouhate for beta-ing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is an offshoot of a Sid-centric fic which I may eventually finish writing. Since Sid was the main character, Joe was doomed, and by all rights, Ned and Jasmine should have been killed, too, but I couldn't bring myself to kill everyone off, so I chickened out and planned a scene where Sid runs into the two of them and finds out that they've gotten married, with the implication that they did it less because they were attracted to each other and more because the Hecky Nash Blackmail Plot Survivors Trauma Support Group wanted tax benefits. And then I started shipping them. (In other words, I swear to god this wasn't a Die For Our Ship thing.)
> 
> The story begins on a Friday.

She bought a new dress for the occasion. Not a wedding dress - not for a second marriage. Not for _this_ second marriage.

Ned met her at the door to the courthouse. “You still want to go through with this?” He looked politely skeptical, and she remembered why she hadn’t much liked him at first.

No rabbi. No friends, no family, witnesses she’d never met and wouldn’t see again. As quiet and quick as they could make it, and then a week-long honeymoon on Cape Cod. Neutral ground.

(“In _November_?” her sister said. “Have you lost your mind? What will you _do_ there?”  
“Oh, what all newlyweds do, I suppose,” Jasmine said.  
“You must think I’m stupid. You’d never - not with this one. With Joe - but he loved you, and you loved him. I don’t understand why you’re marrying Ned. I don’t understand anything you do any more.”  
“You know something?” said Jasmine. “Neither do I.”)

He pulled the ring out of some inner coat pocket, as if he didn’t care. She thought of Joe - what was it - seven years - before, so nervous he dropped _that_ ring, and herself standing there, not sure whether to laugh or get down and help him look for it. Ned must have seen something change in her face, and he hesitated briefly before he slipped it onto her finger.

The ring, the vows, such as they were, the marriage license acquired earlier in the week. (“If you don’t use your legal name, is the marriage still valid?” she had asked then. “It might make things easier if it wasn’t,” he’d said, and given his real one anyway.) Her bags were packed already and in his car, and now they were off.

Less than two hours. Not a long drive, really. She looked at her hand. Married again, and this ring so like the old one she wondered for a moment if Ned had taken it from the box hidden in the back of her dresser drawer. She looked over at him, out of the corner of her eye. He seemed more relaxed now, focused on the road, the right side of his mouth turned up slightly. She still couldn’t quite remember why she had come to like him.

It was too late for brilliant New England fall, and they drove past bare trees above dead grass and rotting leaves. They crossed the Sagamore Bridge, white metal arching overhead against the clouds. The roads were empty, everything closed for the season. Gray roads, gray skies, and old gray houses among bare low hills and young pines.

Ned had found them a cottage on the lower Cape. She thought it might have been closed for the season, too, but he was always good at talking. It was cold and a little damp, and she could see the bay from the kitchen window.

He brought their suitcases in from the car, brushed her off when she tried to help.

They unpacked together, silently, in the bedroom. Near the bottom of the smaller of her two bags was her wedding present to herself, the first one she had touched in two years.

“That’s a dangerous toy, don’t you think? Especially for you,” Ned said, with a slight edge to his voice - mocking or bitter, she didn’t know. “I would have bought it for you if you’d asked.”

“I couldn’t - “ she said, turning the camera over in her hands, “I thought I could leave it behind when we left California. Thought it would always hurt too much. But I thought of the sea, and the light out here, and I couldn’t. But I couldn’t ask you, either.”

His face was unreadable. He turned away and said, “I should tell my parents.”  
“What?” she asked.  
Chin lifted, tight insincere smile. So very familiar. “About the happy occasion. But not tonight. And not tomorrow, either.”  
“I didn’t think your family was religious,” she said.  
“They’re not.”

She replaced the camera and rearranged her dresses in the closet until he finally left. There hadn’t been this tension with Joe. There hadn’t been this tension with Ned, either, before this week. Maybe the marriage hadn’t been real to them until now.

They hadn’t gotten there particularly early, but there was still too much time to fill. Bedtime was a relief and a new problem - another part of marriage they hadn’t thought about until now. She couldn’t bring herself to undress in front of him. He must have felt the same way; he slipped into the bathroom with pajamas in hand when she came out. He wasn’t in there long enough. She needed time to think. She didn’t know how she could share a bed with him.

He opened the bathroom door and stopped awkwardly in the doorway. It was the least poised she could ever remember seeing him, and the striped pajamas made him look slightly ridiculous.

“I’ll sleep on the sofa tonight,” he said. “Unless-“  
“I think that would be best,” Jasmine said, a little stiffly. “There are blankets in the bottom drawer.”  
“Thanks.” He hesitated, and she realized she was blocking his way to the bedroom.  
“I’ll get them,” she said. He followed her and stopped in the doorway.

She dug out two blankets, pulled one of the pillows off the bed, and dumped them in his arms a little too quickly.  
“Goodnight,” he said.  
“Goodnight.” She watched him disappear into the living room, turned, and closed the bedroom door behind her. 

She lay awake for what felt like hours that night, and wondered if he did, too. She wouldn’t have been surprised. He never slept well.


	2. Chapter 2

Saturday continued as Friday had begun. They barely spoke. Ned had brought work with him, and Jasmine walked down to the shore with the camera and began to remember how to look again. She thought she saw him watching her from the window once.  
He slept on the couch again that night.

Sunday morning it rained, ugly and too cold to walk in. The cottage felt too small for both of them, and she couldn’t settle into the living room at first. It was already too much his space.

At around two in the afternoon, Ned stood up, said to no one in particular, “I suppose there’s no use putting it off any longer”, and called Newark.

“Nate? It’s Irving.”  
Jasmine could hear the murmur of the faint distorted voice on the other end.  
“I got married.”  
“Friday afternoon.”  
“Jasmine Fontaine. You remember Jasmine.”  
“Yes you do.”  
“No, she’s not gonna have a kid. What the hell kind of a question is that?”  
“We wanted a quiet wedding.”  
“No, no, I don’t want to talk to her. Don’t - Natey! Jesus Christ.”  
Ned closed his eyes and sighed.  
“Hello, Ma.”  
Jasmine watched him over the top of her book.  
“Where are we, Minsk? Speak English.”  
“That’s why I called.”  
“Friday.”  
“I don’t get you.”  
“English. I told you.”  
“Fine. Have it your way. _I’m_ speaking English.”  
“I just told Natey. No, she’s not going to have a baby. Why should she be?”  
“For Christ’s sake. It’s her second marriage. She didn’t want a big wedding.”  
“Dead. Does it matter?”  
“Ma, her family didn’t come either, and they live in Boston. I have to go. We’ve got dinner reservations.”  
“No, don’t come up here.”  
“Not the week after that either.”  
“Look, we’ll come down next month. For a few days.”  
“You know I can’t stay long.”  
“It’s a one-bedroom. Where’re you gonna sleep, my kitchen floor?” He looked straight at Jasmine, curled up on the couch. “I have to go. My wife’s about to walk out the door without me. We’re going to be late. Goodbye.”

He managed to hang up without slamming the phone down. “I’m sorry.” he said. “I can come up with something later if you’d rather not see them.”

“I don’t mind. I like your family,” she said.

“I just don’t _understand_ how the _hell_ someone can live in this country for _thirty-five goddamn years_ and _still_ not speak English.” He exhaled carefully. “What are you reading?”

“ _Tik-Tok of Oz_.”

“I hate it when women go through my things,” he said.

“You left it on the sofa.”

He put his face in his hands for a moment and looked up again to find her still watching him. “What?” he said, a little wearily.

“I was thinking of what you said, once,” Jasmine told him. “That some guys were better at faking it than others. Are you always this angry?”

“Not always.” He stood up. “I’m going out for a while.”

She turned back to her book and stared at the words without reading them.

“Jasmine?” She looked up. He stood in the open doorway, his coat buttoned and his hat in one hand. He started to speak and then stopped. “Don’t wait up,” he said, and slammed the door behind him.

He came back before dinner. She hadn’t expected him to be out even that long, in this weather. He looked even more sorry for himself than when he left, and Jasmine wasn’t sure whether she wanted to slap some sense into him or comfort him. Instead she ignored him.

He had the sense not to complain about her cooking; he knew her well enough that if he had wanted something other than canned soup he would have made it himself.

Another silent evening. She watched him staring out the window, though he couldn’t have seen anything except his reflection, and tried to think how she had felt two years back, when he was just Joe’s friend with a bad job and a thin, deep streak of unselfishness. Before she knew how far in he was, before she knew how much he was to blame for Joe’s death. And Hecky’s.

Well, it wasn’t just his fault. And she felt almost sorry for him now. He stood up. Bedtime.

“This is ridiculous,” she said. “You can’t sleep on the couch for the rest of your life.”

Ned said, “You don’t owe me anything, you know.”

“I don’t think I owe you,” Jasmine told him. “I think I married you. Or would you rather spend the night in the living room again?”

He smiled weakly at her. “No, I wouldn’t. But -“

“It’s too cold to sleep alone,” she told him. 

He regretted it as soon he lay down. She didn’t want him there, and he couldn’t think why she had suggested it. He curled up as close to the edge of the bed as he could get, and felt her lying awake on the other side. What in God’s name had possessed either of them to think any of this was a good idea?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear to god I wasn't thinking of _Heroes_ when I gave Ned an older brother named Nathan.
> 
> Ned's conversation with his mother is kind of totally cliche, but it sort of got stuck in there because it seemed like it would be in character for him. Also it's reasonably historically accurate for his mother not to have learned English particularly well; there's an interview with Ben Siegel's older daughter where she mentions that his mother didn't really know it.


	3. Chapter 3

She woke up to a cloudy bright morning and Ned seated at the kitchen table, in profile against the window. She stood in the doorway and watched him staring at the wall and the smoke from the cigarette in one hand curling up. She composed the picture mentally - the cigarette, and the cup of coffee, and the way he looked tired and very young when he didn’t think anyone could see. She’d never get it on film - he would be in shadow or the window would be over-bright, and he would notice her if she moved and put his public face back on.

He did notice her then, and his expression shifted, but not as completely as she’d expected. “Have I got something on my face?” he said, irritably.

“No,” she said, and wondered if he would sit for her. Hecky had once, with a mixture of bad grace and vanity. Joe had, after she coaxed him into it, and those were the pictures it hurt most to think of lost in some California landfill.

He looked at her curiously and said, “There’s more coffee, but it’s probably cold by now.”

It was. 

She went down to the beach again after breakfast. The bay was new and the camera was new, and even her ability to see how a camera saw and make it say what you wanted it to had been set aside for so long that it felt new, too. She had doubts about how these pictures would come out.

She saw him first through the viewfinder, a small dark figure between the cottage and the beach. She caught him making his way down to her and then lowered the camera to find him larger and closer than she had realized.

“Hey.”

“What do you want?” she said, ungraciously.

He blinked, a little taken aback. He looked as if he were trying to decide whether to snap at her in return. He chose not to.

“I got tired of reading contracts,” he said. “I am on vacation. Let me see that thing.”

“Oh.” She pulled the strap over her head and handed the camera to him.

“I haven’t used one of these since I was a kid.” He grinned at her. The crooked side of his mouth was suddenly very noticeable. She’d never been able to bring herself to ask about it. He held the camera up to his face. “Smile,” he said.

“No, don’t - “ she said, holding up her hand. “The focus is wrong.”

He started fiddling with dials.

“Don’t - don’t - here - let me,” she said, taking it from him.

“Show me,” he said, and leaned in over the camera, far too close. 

It wasn’t hard to explain how it worked - the aperture confused him a little, but that wasn’t uncommon - but to explain how you put it all together and how you saw - she didn’t know how to do that. He’d just have to figure that out on his own.

She let him adjust the settings, under her direction. She showed him how to change the film. She watched him take pictures long after it started boring her and she wanted _her_ camera back. She was going to have to get him his own when they got back to Boston.

(She found later, when she developed them, that his pictures were as bad as she had expected they’d be, but despite his inexperience and despite his self-absorption and his willingness to ignore facts he didn’t like, there were a handful there where she thought he had really seen something and tried to catch it.)

He finished another roll and struggled to rewind the film. She went to help him.

“it’s black and white, isn’t it?” he said.

“Yes.”

“We should get color.”

“Color’s expensive.”

He looked down at the camera in his hands, away from her. “You know I have money, don’t you, Jasmine?”

She did. She had been trying not to think about it. It wasn’t honest money, and it wasn't hers, and she didn’t want to ever come to depend on it.

The subject seemed to make him nearly as uncomfortable as it did her. He handed the camera back to her with a half apology for keeping it so long, and stayed to watch as she took pictures. It threw her off to have an audience. She could have given up for the day, but she found she liked seeing him like this - absorbed, and happy without being smug - and she let him borrow the camera again until she grew impatient and took it back.

She was going to get him his own so she could take pictures of him using it.

The feeling didn’t quite leave her, even after they went back to the cottage. She found they had things to say to each other again, and this evening didn’t drag on like the others had. 

They still kept space between them in bed, but Ned felt her relax into sleep easily and followed quicker than he expected.

—

He dreamed he loved her and couldn’t have her and woke to find her dark hair inches from his face. He put his hand on her shoulder and shook her gently. “Jasmine?”

“Uh?” She rolled over to face him.

“Jasmine, can we . . .?” He tugged on her nightgown, just enough to get the message across.

She touched the side of his face and he felt the metal of her wedding ring against his jaw. “Yes.”

She wasn’t his usual type of girl, and he didn’t know what to say to her or what she liked, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone might walk in on them any time, and he forgot everything he ever knew about sex, and afterwards he could only remember her in fragments - a hand in his hair, her back underneath his arm, her leg over his. He realized he had forgotten to kiss her. He hoped she didn’t think he was always this bad.

He’d had the sense to empty his pockets on the night table instead of the dresser, so he didn’t need to stumble across the room half naked in the dark (and cold - this place wasn’t fit for human beings after September) looking for his cigarettes and lighter. 

He switched on the lamp and lit a cigarette. Jasmine sat up against the headboard and pulled her knees to her chest.

Three times, he thought. He saved your life three times and you get him killed and then screw his girl. Semper fi, my ass.

He offered her the cigarette. She waved it away and didn’t look at him. “I feel like I’m committing adultery,” she said.

“Jesus, Jasmine, you’ve been divorced for what? Four years? Five?”

She rested her chin on her knees. “I don’t think I ever really left him,” she said.

“So what was Hecky Nash? Someone to buy you mink coats? Shoulda picked a guy with more money,” he said, and immediately regretted it. “He’s been dead for two years, Jas. Gotta move on sometime.”

“I can’t move on,” she said. “I can’t - You weren’t there. It was - I can’t.“

Don’t get hysterical, he thought, because if you get hysterical I’ll slap you and then you’ll probably kill me. I know how it was. I know better than you do. The difference is I signed up for it and you didn’t. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“You will never be sorry enough.”

And if I ever let myself forget it, he thought, grinding the cigarette out in the ashtray on the bedside table, you’ll be there reminding me. Bitch. It was your fault too. He said, “I want a glass of water,” swung his legs out of bed, and realized that any chance at a grand exit was ruined by the pajama pants around his ankles. He pulled them up and left the room with as much dignity as he could manage. 

He didn’t come back that night.


End file.
